Currently Online 
pokoko said:
No, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. It's a sophomoric and bitter piece. Read it again and note all the hyperbole and insults. Note all the strawman arguments and false information. That's not professional at all. As for the idea that improving your hardware hurts gaming, that's ridiculous. It's like saying we should take brushes away from painters and give them pieces of grass because it will make their paintings better. It's just sophistry. Not even Nintendo believes that, as every single device they've made has been more powerful than previous models. Even then, the entire point of Sony's presentation wasn't "moar power", it was about removing artificial barriers. Are the artists themselves, the developers, complaining about the Cell being replaced by normalized PC architecture? Are they angry that more RAM lets them do what they want? If so, then I'll listen to his point, but I haven't heard anything like that. The writer just wants gaming to fit his vision, that's all, and no other. He doesn't want explosions, he doesn't want FPS, he doesn't want anything that he won't enjoy to exist. And that's sad and hateful. I loathe people like that. |
Hyperbole is a literary device, and I think the author uses it expertly in the piece. I'll concede your point about it being gratuitously argumentative and insulting.
But that doesn't change the veracity of his thesis, which is that power alone does not a good game make. If anything, a preoccupation with power will hurt the medium, not improve it. Who knows? Maybe PS4 will surprise all of us, and translate all that horsepower under the hood into something progressive. All I know is that there is something essential to a video game, and it doesn't require state-of-the-art graphics, sound, physics, etc.
As to your last paragraph, doesn't everyone want his hobby or passion of choice to conform to his ideal? Why invest so much time, money, and energy in a hobby and not care in which direction it goes?
